


When a righteous man breaks in Hell - SPN ficlet, no slash

by loveinadoorway



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-09
Updated: 2009-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinadoorway/pseuds/loveinadoorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something about the sentence I made the title of this fic bothered me, so I had to write this, maybe only to drag Dean out of his self-loathing, maybe for other reasons, like how can he be a vessel to Michael if he’s tainted by turning fully demon in hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When a righteous man breaks in Hell - SPN ficlet, no slash

_**When a righteous man breaks in Hell - SPN ficlet, no slash**_  


 **Disclaimer:** Am for once playing nicely with them, no damage done, returning them in pristine condition to their makers.  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Genre:** gen  
 **Word Count:** ~1479  
 **Characters/Pairings:** Dean and Cas, but not slashy for a change  
 **Warnings:** a little language, booze, contemplation of suicide  
 **Summary:** Something about the sentence I made the title of this fic bothered me, so I had to write this, maybe only to drag Dean out of his self-loathing, maybe for other reasons, like how can he be a vessel to Michael if he’s tainted by turning fully demon in hell.  
 

Dean was sitting at the bar of another low down dive in a nowhere town, seeking oblivion on the bottom of a bottle of Jack. He was finding that feat harder to achieve of late, but then again, Hell had a way of doing a guy’s head in that even withstood the steady influx of whisky.  
He was swirling the last dregs of amber liquid around in the glass and his mind was wandering down that path again.

He could feel the gun pressing against the small of his back.  
He was tired, worn so thin he was surprised he couldn’t see the wood of the bar through the hand that rested on it.  
All he had to do was get up and walk out back.  
In the dark alley behind the bar, he could eat a bullet and be done with it. He’d go straight back to Hell, where he the fuck belonged. It would be easy. So much easier, in fact, than it was to keep going.

His muscles started to tense as he prepared to slide down the bar stool, when a hand was put gently on his shoulder, stopping the motion and ending his chance to just walk away from it all.  
He stilled completely.  
It was fairly obvious, even without turning, that the hand could only belong to a grand total of two people – and calling the one entity “people” was actually not entirely accurate in the first place.

The gravelly “Hello Dean” that reached his ear, pitched perfectly so only he could hear it, confirmed that he was not about to be berated for being drunk again and hauled off to the motel by his baby brother, but that he probably was going to receive a moral tongue lashing for his wicked, wicked ways or some dire news about the upcoming Apocalypse from the fucking angel of fucking Thursday.

He chuckled mirthlessly and signaled the bar tender that he needed another one.  
“Hi Cas,” he said, still refusing to turn around.  
The tan trench coat whispered as the angel sat on the stool next to him and Dean noted with surprise that Castiel was gesturing the bartender to hit him with a whisky as well.  
“So, you’re drinking now? My vices startin’ to rub off on you?” he asked the angel.  
“It seems nonsensical to walk into a bar and then not drink, doesn’t it?” Cas asked with that maddening head tilt of his.

Dean laughed.  
A sinner and an angel walk into a bar. Such was the stuff awful jokes were made of.  
He took a sip of whisky and ran his hand across his eyes.  
“What do you want from me, Cas?” he asked wearily.  
“We need to talk about what you were contemplating just now. I can’t let you kill yourself.”  
“Yeah, right, because suicide is a sin and all that shit. Newsflash, Cas, I don’t exactly care about adhering to your kind of moral standards anymore. I’ve been to Hell already and I’ll go back there without fail when I die.”

Castiel sighed and turned the shot glass around in his hand, watching the light reflect in the whisky. Things were so much worse than expected.  
He had argued against letting Dean retain memories of his time in Hell.  
He had argued hotly, in fact, that Dean would be damaged by the knowledge, that it would make him vulnerable and that it might even be detrimental to their mission.  
He had been ignored.

To his superiors, Dean was just a tool to be used and then discarded.  
Dean’s emotional state was of no consequence and neither was anyone concerned about the man’s self-destructive tendencies and their possible consequences to his health after the mission was completed.  
He was charged with seeing to it that Dean wouldn’t self-destruct before then, but anything else didn’t matter at all to Castiel’s superiors.  
Cas tended to disagree.

The angel was finding it hard to express the right amount of human emotion. Either, he was apparently displaying too little, or too much. Too little made him seem cold and aloof and too much made him look scary and too intense.  
So this thing was going to be tricky.  
And then some – on top of the angel’s own issue with emotions, Dean wasn’t exactly the most emotionally adept person himself.  
How to reassure Dean without crossing a line or coming across as a dick seemed a momentous task.

Three whiskies later, Cas was still unsure about how to proceed and the growing buzz didn’t exactly help, either. Or maybe it did. Maybe he should just let his control slip and spill the proverbial beans, as it were.  
“Dean…,” he said, his tongue sliding awkwardly around the name.  
“Yeah. Still here,” slurred the man beside him.  
“Do you remember what you were told had broken the first seal?”  
“Not easy to forget, given that it was me who did it.”  
“Tell me. Exactly.”  
“When a righteous man breaks in Hell, the first seal is broken.”

Cas nodded. He motioned to the bartender for another whisky.  
“What do you think it means, Dean?” he asked softly.  
“I broke. Turned evil. Broke the fucking seal. What else would it mean?” Dean asked, face a mask of abject misery.  
Everything was his fault from beginning to end.  
He hadn’t been good enough, hadn’t been strong enough and thus the Apocalypse would start unless he of all people could come up with a major miracle and stop it. Yeah, right.

“No, Dean. Everyone breaks in Hell. Your father was no exception, that was a lie they told you. It’s a gradual process, where everything good, clean and righteous is driven out of them. And when they break, they are no longer anything resembling a human and they are no longer righteous. They have turned evil even before they truly break. Fully evil. Unsalvageable evil. You were the one righteous man who broke, Dean. You broke, yet STILL you are righteous. You sit here next to me, drunk as a skunk, but it’s a righteous skunk that you are. Understand?”  
“No. Can’t say that I do.”

Cas sighed and tried again: “You are not a bad man. You are not evil. You don’t deserve to die. You deserve to live and if anyone ever deserved rescuing from Hell, it was you. And so I did. And the pain and the horror of it didn’t matter one bit to me, because I was rescuing a righteous man from Hell. A righteous man who had broken and done unspeakable things, but still retained his soul. I would not have been able to bring you back from Hell without it. I could not have brought anyone else back from Hell but you, because – and I repeat myself - you are the only righteous man who broke in Hell.”

Dean didn’t know what to say, let alone what to think.  
“I’m not buying that, Cas. You’re only sayin’ that to make me feel better,” he slurred. “I liked torturing these souls, Cas. I reveled in it. Nothin’ righteous about that.”  
“Did you know you were torturing them? I mean, did you understand you were doing horrible things to them?”  
“Yeah and a part of me was repulsed the whole time, but I still did it.”

The angel of Thursday turned around to his human charge and smiled. It was a very warm, serene smile that touched something deep inside of Dean. For some reason, it made him think of Christmas and unwrapping presents with his parents before Sammy had even been born.  
“Dean, you just said it yourself. A part of you always knew what you were doing and was horrified. That was your righteous soul, right there. That is what made you unique among all souls trapped in Hell. That is what made it possible for me to find you in the darkness and the horror and pull you out.”

Cas paused to look deep into those green eyes that were filled to the brim with pain, self-loathing and remorse.  
“You are not a monster, Dean. And you are a much better man than anyone, especially you yourself, ever gave you credit for. Do not disappoint me by throwing the gift away that I gave you. Do not sell yourself short. Do not despair.”  
“I already told you I can’t do what you ask of me. I already told you I’m not strong enough.”

Cas snorted impatiently.  
“I don’t care what you say, Dean. I know you. I have put you back together from all those tiny pieces. I know your soul like I know the back of my own hand. I know you can do everything we asked you to and much, much more besides.”  
“Cas,” Dean groaned, but the angel dismissed his protest with a wave of his hand.  
“I have faith in you, Dean Winchester.”  
Blue eyes locked on green and something that was broken healed. ****


End file.
